Wills Class

Today in Physical theater, i felt like i really learnt a lot. Half of us worked in Wills class this week and i really enjoyed it. We started in semi supine, playing freely with our limbs. Taking one of the floor at a time and make it feel as if a puppeteer was controlling us, we were free and loose to move where we wanted. I really enjoyed the music being played as we were doing all of this, as it gave us a chance to close our eyes and really focus on the music in a sense, and not on controlling our bodies all the time. I really liked being able to be rolling around the floor on just my spine, or just my right shoulder blade, as i have never really tried to do that, so it felt very new to me. We worked on various different ways on how to get around the floor, looking at certain animalistic routes, such as jumping feet first, like a monkey. There was one exercise that i really enjoyed practicing and that was where you put your head on the ground, your feet on the floor, and you lift your arms up, and balance on your head and your hands. When explained to us, i thought that this would be the hardest task of all of them, but i really enjoyed it and also felt very liberated doing it, as i never knew my body could balance on just my head and my feet on the floor in such an awkward position. Throughout the lesson we did a lot of contact improvisation, and using emotion with that to make a physical scene.

Lesson 1

Todays lesson i found really interesting and learnt a lot. We did two main exercises in the lesson that were both very interesting and i took away a lot from them both. We first did a game/exercise called 'Clear the space', the instructions were that we had to listen to every direction and follow that. It was all about being able to listen to more than one 'command' at one time, but more  importantly, it was about being able to use the full potential of our bodies within a small space surrounded by 25 others also trying to use their bodies with the same instructions.  Clear the space is a classic Frantic Assembly warm up, it consists of these different directions (I am sure that these could be adapted and changed to suit different classes)

Clear- Everyone had to go to the nearest wall and touch it, it couldn't be the same wall twice in a row.

Center- Everyone in slow motion moved into the center of the room, and then rested their head on another persons shoulder. 

Favorite- You had to stretch out your arm as far as you could, and point to your favourite thing in the room. This place is a pre-chosen place, and always remains the same, 

TV- The teacher will make a tv shape with her/his arms, and the class has to run and sit crossed legged under the 'TV', our teacher adapted it also so that she would call out TV programmes and facially and physically we would have to react to those programmes.

Pair- We would go to the closest person to us and hug them tightly and not let go until told to start walking around the room again.

Door- We had to get into a position on the floor, with both of our hands on the floor, so we could push off them to get back up easily, this position was as if you were looking under a door, maybe at something you shouldn't be. 

Floor- You used your body to roll across the floor as you were still moving around. You had you let your lower back roll along the floor and then push yourself back up and carry on walking around. 

I really enjoyed this exercise and think it stretched us all to our limit to an extent, because we were having to concentrate on so many different things, but then also having to physically move for all of those things, it really loosened up my body, as it was adapting to not even thinking, just  doing the movements.

We then learnt about another frantic assembly technique called Chair Duets. We watched parts of Frantic Assembly Book of Devising Theatre (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LC-dkYZOUVo) I think that watching this was very useful because it gave a me a clear idea on what chair duets were about, but also how subtle they can be. There was no over exaggeration in the piece, nor was there any mellow drama, it was just all very pedestrian. We got into pairs and used two chairs to try a create a short piece. Me and my partner Joe wanted to re create what we had seen, by taking some of the ideas but keeping the piece very subtle still. We only really made around a 20 second piece but we kept repeating it to show how floppy our movements were, and how easy it was just to start again, as i think it did flow quite well, because we were trying to be as natural as possible. 

It consisted of things such as i would bump Joes elbow with my own, which made his arm, go over my shoulders, then i would bend down, as if i was looking at something, and his arm would fall back over my head. We would then use one an others hands, to direct their hands to a part of our bodies, it was all very much pedestrian, and because me and joe tried to use natural facial expressions, to sort of show a story along with the piece, i think after being directed by Sarah, it looked very improvised, which i think me and joe were aiming to achieve. Overall, i think that the first lesson back, i learnt so much about Frantic Assembly and the similarity between their techniques and exercises.